Good day and welcome to the Hochschild Mining Quarter One 2023 Production Results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ignacio Bustamante. The line is open. Thank you.
Thank you, Caroline. Hello, welcome to our conference call to discuss our first quarter production results. I'm here in Lima with Eduardo Noriega, our CFO, and in London is Charlie Gordon, our Head of Investor Relations. Obviously, it has not been that long since our full year results, I will keep this short and then open up to questions. Group production in the quarter was just over 64,000 gold equivalent ounces or 5.4 million silver equivalent ounces. At Inmaculada, output was just over 31,000 ounces of gold and 1.3 million ounces of silver, which is a gold equivalent in total of 46,600 ounces. The timing of the approval of operations Modified Environmental Impact has, as anticipated, impacted mine development in the first quarter.
As you know, we also have some local and national disruption, but there was an offset from better than expected grades. To repeat what we said three weeks ago, we continue to expect a Peruvian government decision on the Modified Environmental Impact Assessment in this quarter. Subject to an approval, we remain confident that the mine will meet its guidance for the year as it has done every year since commissioning. In Argentina, the first quarter always contains the personnel's seasonal vacations and consequently tonnage through the mill was lower in the period as well as some lower than expected grades. Output was 1.9 million silver equivalent ounces, which is a big improvement on the results from last year when we still had COVID as well as a fire in the crushing area.
This mine has always been weighted towards the remaining quarter of the quarters of the year. We expect the same in 2023. Over at Pallancata, production was 514,000 silver equivalent ounces, which reflects the long-term decline in silver grade profile and a mining area that is close to completion. As we have previously indicated, we expect to place the mine on care and maintenance later in the year. In terms of costs, I am pleased to say that we are reiterating our 2023 guidance, which if you remember is within $1,370 and $1,450 per gold equivalent ounce. Turning to our Mara Rosa construction project, we have had a good start to the year with the total project progress now at 77%.
Detail engineering is 99% complete and deliveries of key project equipment are all on schedule, whilst civil works for the processing plant area is 86% finished. Finally, the power supply for the mine is expected to be completed in July. We remain on time and on budget, and it's exciting to remind you that commissioning is on track for the first half of next year. I'm not going to say too much on exploration as the timing on the brownfield program in Peru is subject to the approval of the Inmaculada Modified Environmental Impact Assessment. We have made a start to drilling in Argentina and expect results to start coming through over the next few months.
On the financial side, we have approximately $103 million of cash, which translates to net debt of $218 million and a net debt to the last twelve months EBITDA of around 0.95. The cash balance obviously reflects capital expenditure at Mara Rosa and temporary working capital variations, including tax payments among others. To sum up, we are reiterating our guidance for the year, even though the first quarter will be the weakest of the four and we are making further good progress with our Mara Rosa project in Brazil. Finally, and most importantly, we expect Inmaculada's Modified Environmental Impact Assessment process to be completed by the end of the current quarter. With that, I would like to open up to any questions that you may have.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line Ian Rossouw from Barclays. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Ignacio. Just wanted to dig a bit more into your comment around production being second half weighted. Presumably, if the MEIA or the permitting has sort of delayed development in Q1, should we expect that to happen into Q2 as well? If you could maybe give us a sense of what should we expect for the H1, H2 split for the various operations? If you can give us maybe a % or full year, et cetera, would be great. Thank you.
Sure. As a general guidance, Ian, typically our production in the first quarter of the year is the weakest as mentioned. That is particularly notorious in San Jose, which the personnel goes to on vacation for an important part of the period. Those change, those things change during the rest of the year. The second quarter for Inmaculada should be better than the first one because of the mine planning for the year. It has been scheduled to be that way. Grade is gonna start building up. We should expect an increase in production in the second quarter.
Getting into the second half of the year is where we should expect to see the biggest increases in grades, because we're gonna be accessing the new areas of the mine, assuming that decision of the Modified Environmental Impact Assessment is obtained as guided in the second quarter of the year. Second quarter should be better than the first one, and then the remaining two quarters of the year, third and fourth quarter of the year should be even better. In the case of Pallancata, as you know, it's a little bit more unpredictable because we are in the last stages of the mine. We are pretty much mining material that is in the border, that has a lot of variability.
Having said that, we still expect also that the grades should start improving in the remaining part of the year. Again, you know, with more uncertainty because of the variability, the grades in the border areas. San Jose, even though it was better than the first quarter of last year because of the reasons that I mentioned, the COVID situation last year and the incident in the crushing area, also the grades are lower than what we are expecting for the rest of the year because of mine planning, programming, scheduling. We should expect to see also an improvement getting into the remaining quarters of the year.
In short, we should expect to see a better second quarter in production and an even much better second half of the year in our operations in general.
Okay. All right, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Daniel Major from UBS. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for questions. First question just on the approval of the environmental permit. At the final full year results, you kind of talked to three outcomes, worst case, long protracted delay, short delay and approval. Can you tell us, one, if you give any indication of what the critical path item is preventing the approval, if there is one? Two, in terms of probabilities, where are you sitting on those three outcomes as we stand today?
Basically, we are reiterating what we said three weeks ago when we announced our full year results. The three scenarios are still present. We believe that by far the highest chances are on the first one, which is the one that we are presenting to the market, which is a decision by the end of the second quarter of the year, before the end of June. Our expectation is that that is going to be a positive decision. However, as you know, this is dependent on the government decision. We see no reason why this should get, you know, denied or why it should get delayed based on the information that we have as of today.
That's the main assumption that we're currently working on and what we believe the highest chances, currently, are.
Okay. Can you give us any I mean, is there something specific that's outstanding, you know, the, you know, that prevents the approval? Is there a certain item?
No, not really. There's nothing material pending. I would say it's more to complete the work and to complete the review of the observations that were made in the reviews by the by the governing entity, which is SENACE. Going through any additional questions that they may have. You know. This is gonna be a period in which there should be a lot of interaction with organizations in charge of granting the permits. As you can imagine, this is a top priority for us. All the resources of the company are dedicated in answering any potential remaining questions.
So far, no, it's just, I would say just going through the administrative work of reviewing the final observations and complete those reviews.
Okay. The next one on your balance sheet and, in the downside scenario that Inmaculada is closed at the end of the year, on your internal assessments, at this current gold and silver price, would you have a sufficient amount of EBITDA generation on a look-forward basis from Mara Rosa and San Jose to prevent a covenant breach in second half 2024?
Yes. Let me pass that question to our CFO, Eduardo Noriega who's also with me, Daniel.
Thank you, Daniel. Certainly in a situation in which we don't get the MEIA and we have to put in Inmaculada on care and mainatenance we'll have to take internal measures to adjust the size of the company to the new reality of having, for a period of time, Mara Rosa and San Jose. We will take measures to adjust the company to that size and be able to ensure the continuity of the company. In terms of the governance that we have, we should be fine for this year. The positive thing here is that we are in close contact with our lenders, and we have developed a good relationship with them.
We are, and they are ready to react in case of unexpected scenario as the one we do describe. They have been the banks have been accompanying us during this period, so they are very well aware of the current status of the permitting process done.
Cool. thanks. tell her good luck, with the final approval.
Thank you.
of the permit.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. If you would like to ask question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the next question from line, Richard Hatch from Berenberg. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah, morning, Ignacio and Eduardo. Hope you're well. Just wonder if I can drill a bit into San Jose. The grade obviously came off quite a lot quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year. Just wonder whether you might be able to give us a bit of color on how we should think about the grade progression for San Jose as we go through. Then just looking at McEwen's results, they were talking about negative grade reconciliation to the model. I just wonder whether you might just be able to sort of talk a bit about that. That's the first one.
Sure. Regarding the first part or the first one, regarding grade reconciliation, I mean that is obviously something relatively typical in this type of operations, underground veins with such variability. Nothing really that should be materially concerning for us. If there are differences, they tend to be reconciled, or they tend to be identified. We would expect that part of the differences with the model are going to be recovered during the rest of the year. You know? That's something that is in progress.
In terms of grades, you know, roughly, you know, we have been in the case of gold, I would say, you know, as an average of 4 grams or so, and in the case of silver, you know, 220, 230 in the first quarter of the year, you know, oscillating in January, February and March. We would expect that for the second quarter of the year, we're gonna be somewhere around low 5s for gold and around high 290s or low 300s for silver.
For the third and fourth quarter of the year, we should be more in the, you know, low to mid fives for gold and in the case of silver, we should be around 350, 360 grades in average for the second half of the year. That's the way you should see the grades moving for the rest of the year.
Okay. Okay. I mean, just kind of doing that while you speak kind of points to, you know, you having to push some throughput. I mean, I think the plant was a little bit, little bit light, wasn't it, Q1? That's seasonal. You know, is the plan therefore to kind of run the plant sort of as hard as you can, about 150,000 tons a quarter? Is that kind of where your head's at to sort of really try and make it sort of squeeze a bit higher? That's how you make up that sort of softer grade in the first quarter?
The biggest toilets issues in the first quarter of the year were related to the vacations of the personnel.
Yeah.
Which is something that happens once a year. The idea is that for the remainder of the year, Richard, we're gonna be using the plant at full capacity.
Okay, cool. Thanks very much. Okay, cool. Just on Pallancata, can you just remind us when we should, when we should see volumes coming out of that mine? Perhaps just, I mean, it's only been a few weeks, but, on Royropata, can you just give us an update on what you're seeing there? You know, recent drill results that... I don't think we've got any drill results in this release. Is there, you know, how's that kind of coming along and suppressing as you'd expect?
Sure. In the case of Pallancata, what we're currently targeting is, you know, a potential completion of operations by the end of this year. Final timing is going to depend on a series of variable, among those, silver prices, grade reconciliation and of course the results of some additional ramping work that we are doing in the operational area. Much harder to anticipate, but so far the best guidance that we can give is additionally in towards the end of this year. You know, again, the grade we believe that are gonna be highly dependent on the reconciliation of the models. There's a lot of variability in there.
The second part of your question was, where are we in Royropata? Royropata, we will not be doing any additional work at this point in time. We already have a very large resource base and, you know, over 50 million ounces with grades of around 850, 5 meter wide width. It's looking really encouraging and it has a lot of potential to increase because we have drilled up to the maximum that we can drill from the current permitted area. Now we need to wait for additional permits to be able to drill more into other regions.
What we have already, we have more than enough to project the growth of the mine and start working on the permit for the, for that part of the mine. The permitting process has already started. We have already started the work. We continue targeting that. This is a process that could take us around three years. We are gonna be rushing as much as we can and hopefully the government also works along the same lines on ways to improve the timing of the permitting process for the entire sector in the country, which is something that is really needed. We can optimize those timings furthermore. I would say it's looking very encouraging.
There's plenty of geological potential, and we have already started the permitting process and we're moving at full speed.
Cool. Thank you so much, Ignacio.
Thank you, Richard.
Thank you very much. There is no further question at this time. I will hand it back over to your host for closing remarks.
Thank you, Caroline. Thank you very much everybody for participating in today's call. As usual, should you have any additional questions or comments, please feel free to contact Charlie Gordon at our London office. Thank you very much and have a nice day.
Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.